Travel with Treble: Membership has its privileges, palace edition

I do a lot of research before my royal-themed trips to Britain. Partly it’s for work – I write about royalty for a living – and partly it’s because I’ve found that I prefer creating a basic outline of a trip, with lots of options for maximum flexibility. So if rain is in the forecast, I’ll opt for indoor activities. If my feet are sore, then I’ll pick a less energetic outing, likely one that involves sitting in a pub or scenic cafe.

Perhaps the smartest decision I made for recent visits to London was to get a one-year membership to Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), the charity that runs six unoccupied royal residences, including:

• Tower of London

• Kensington Palace

• Hampton Court Palace

• Banqueting House

• Kew Palace

• Hillsborough Castle (Northern Ireland)

I’d never considered such an outlay before. Yet such group memberships can be very cost effective.

Last autumn, while planning a visit to the United Kingdom for November 2025, I knew it was likely that I’d return to London within 12 months. So when the friend who would be travelling with me in 2025 and 2026 raised the idea of a HRP membership, we both did a bit of homework, including exploring the HRP website for upcoming events and exhibitions. We both soon realized that buying annual memberships made sense for us.

Sometimes, one’s plans don’t match the reality of a trip, so here’s what my friend and I ended up doing at HRP locations:

November 2025:

• Ogled the Crown Jewels in the Jewel House of the Tower of London and had lunch (10% discount) inside the Tower. Left the Tower for a work event, then reentered to see the Medieval Palace.

• Saw the Dress Codes exhibition and the jewellery room at Kensington Palace on our last morning in Britain

• Enjoyed the evening Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London (separate ticket, then £5)

• My friend spent a day at Hampton Court Palace

April 2026:

• Members-only visit to Banqueting House (free)

• Members-only evening guided tour of Kensington Palace (£15)

• Return to Kensington Palace to see the exhibition, The Last Princesses of Punjab, and enjoying a tea (10% discount) and buying a book (10% discount)

• Tower of London visit to see parts not seen in the November visit

Like me, you have to do some planning and tourist math – comparing what you will likely do on a holiday with the options available for a particular membership. For me, if the tally comes within 15 percent of the cost of a membership, then I’ll buy it.

For Historical Royal Palaces, an annual membership is £75 (around CAD$140). Entry to individual sites for an adult with no donation are currently:

• Tower of London: £37

• Kensington Palace: £19

• Hampton Court Palace: £29

• Banqueting House: £10

• Kew Palace (included with entry to Kew Gardens): £21.85

The members-only events, some of which were free, really added a lot of value to the cost of the membership. For instance, the chance of going on a guided tour of Kensington Palace in the evening meant we could do other stuff during the day while also avoiding the daytime crowds of tourists.

As well, there’s the bonus of knowing we didn’t have to spend hours and hours exhaustively exploring a site in one visit, which is a natural inclination given the cost of individual tickets. Instead, having a membership meant we could go to a particular exhibition or event, then leave, confident that we’d be back to see another part of the site. Then there is the opportunity to avoid crowds by going for just an hour or two at the start of a day — it’s more enjoyable and allows one to take photos without battling hoards of tourists.

In addition, we seized the opportunity to get tickets to the 700-year-old “locking up” of the Tower of London called the Ceremony of the Keys (£10 minimum).

As a journalist who writes about all things royal-related, I have the option of requesting a media entry ticket to see a particular exhibition or event. I did that to review the Tower of London River Tour in this post from May 29.

I opted for the annual HRP membership because I wanted maximum flexibility. Not only was I travelling with a friend, but the weather in November and early April can be …. changeable. Sure enough, we fled the Tower of London before seeing everything we’d hoped for when buckets of rain poured down on us in November.

The current price of an adult annual membership is 75 pounds (roughly CAD$140, for, as Canadians, we have to use credit cards, not the U.K.-based direct debit option). That price will go up on February 28, 2027, so put a note in your calendar if you’re even considering buying such a one-year membership for a trip in 2027.

Also, if you live abroad, then consider buying such a membership a bit early. Sure that means your one-year clock also starts early, but we ran into the trouble of a postal strike in Canada, which delayed delivery of our physical HRP membership cards until just before we left for the trip. We could have used our electronic confirmations to access sites, but that would have added an unwanted layer of complication.

That decision depends on the events on offer and my schedule. In terms of purchasing another Historic Royal Palaces annual membership, the option is near the top of my trip-organizing list having experienced the benefit of having such a card while on a London-centric trip.

Right now, I’m mulling ideas for my next trip, and one possibility involves seeing a bunch of great country homes. So, as I prepare my list of options, I’m including whether each estate is part of the National Trust, English Heritage, or Historic Houses. If a pattern develops, then purchasing a membership may again be in the offing.

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